Free For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago by Simon Baatz

further—Nathan was sure to stonewall him—but, nevertheless, there was no harm trying. “Nathan, I understood you to say that the typewriter had been taken out again by the boy that brought it in.”
    “That was my assumption.”
    “You just assumed that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You don’t know whether it was actually taken out or not?”
    “No, I do not.”
    “Or you don’t know when it was taken out, if it ever was taken out?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Do you ever remember the typewriter coming in?”
    “I do not.”
    “Do you remember under what circumstances it could have come into the house?…It would hardly come into the house without some comment at the time the machine was brought there; what I mean is, that one would hardly come in and leave a typewriter at your house without saying something about it?”
    “I should not think so.” 26

    T HERE WAS ONE MORE POSSIBILITY. The previous November, he had begun a project with a friend, Leon Mandel, to translate Pietro Aretino’s fifteenth-century pornographic novel I Ragionamenti into English. This had been a provocative decision on Nathan’s part. Aretino’s Dialogues between two women contained graphic descriptions of sodomy and bestiality; the sensationalism of the narrative overshadowed the work’s literary value. Ernest Wilkins, professor of Italian and dean of the undergraduate college at the university, had warned Nathan not to go through with the translation, but Nathan persisted nevertheless. Both Nathan and Leon Mandel hoped to persuade “some friend of ours to publish a very small little edition, two or three hundred copies, or subscriptions to be circulated only among people who had a legitimate interest in the literature of the times,” but it was a more demanding task than either had anticipated: they completed fewer than twenty pages before abandoning the translation. 27
    Leon Mandel had, however, frequently come to the Leopold home to work on the translation, and Nathan suggested that he may have brought the Underwood typewriter with him. 28
    But Elizabeth Sattler had told the police that she had last seen the portable as recently as two weeks ago: that is, around the middle of May, just one week before the murder of Bobby Franks. Leon Mandel had been married on 30 April and had immediately sailed for Europe on his honeymoon. One month later, he was still on his honeymoon, so if the maid had seen the typewriter only two weeks ago, then obviously Mandel had not taken it out of the house. So, Nathan, where was that typewriter?
    “I don’t know.”
    “If it was Mandel’s machine, it would still be there, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “These boys say that they never had a machine. Where is that machine?…You kept denying, right up until a few minutes ago, that you knew anything about it…. It was a machine one of these boys brought in, you didn’t know when, where or how, and he took it out, and you didn’t know when, where or how.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you were confronted with each boy, weren’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And after the boy told you you were a liar, you changed your opinion, didn’t you?…The fact that that letter that Franks got was written on the same machine that some of your stuff was written on, and the fact that experts say that the same person wrote it might be a damned good reason for you in losing that machine.”
    “Certainly.”
    “And knowing nothing about it?”
    “Certainly.” 29

    N ATHAN L EOPOLD HAD NOW BEEN in police custody for almost thirty-six hours, from Thursday afternoon through the evening of Friday, 30 May. Yet at the Leopold home on Greenwood Avenue, the family’s faith in Nathan’s innocence remained unshaken; the entire affair was still, in his father’s eyes, an unfortunate mistake that would inevitably be corrected.
    Was there anything the family could do to help Nathan in his predicament? Sven Englund, the family chauffeur, told Nathan’s father that Nathan could not possibly